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DESY, the Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron research center, has created a transparent, extremely hard ceramic.
Scientists have synthesised the first transparent sample of a popular industrial ceramic at DESY. The result is a super-hard window made of cubic silicon nitride that can potentially be used under extreme conditions like in engines, as the Japanese-German team writes in the journal Scientific Reports. Cubic silicon nitride (c-Si3N4) forms under high pressure and is the second hardest transparent nanoceramic after diamond but can withstand substantially higher temperatures.
"Silicon nitride is a very popular ceramic in industry," explains lead author Dr. Norimasa Nishiyama from DESY who now is an associate professor at Tokyo Institute of Technology. "It is mainly used for ball bearings, cutting tools and engine parts in automotive and aircraft industry." The ceramic is extremely stable, because the silicon nitrogen bond is very strong. At ambient pressures, silicon nitride has a hexagonal crystal structure and sintered ceramic of this phase is opaque. Sintering is the process of forming macroscopic structures from grain material using heat and pressure. The technique is widely used in industry for a broad range of products from ceramic bearings to artificial teeth.
At pressures above 130 thousand times the atmospheric pressure, silicon nitride transforms into a crystal structure with cubic symmetry that experts call spinel-type in reference to the structure of a popular gemstone. Artificial spinel (MgAl2O4) is widely used as transparent ceramic in industry. "The cubic phase of silicon nitride was first synthesised by a research group at Technical University of Darmstadt in 1999, but knowledge of this material is very limited," says Nishiyama. His team used a large volume press (LVP) at DESY to expose hexagonal silicon nitride to high pressures and temperatures. At approximately 156 thousand times the atmospheric pressure (15.6 gigapascals) and a temperature of 1800 degrees Celsius a transparent piece of cubic silicon nitride formed with a diameter of about two millimetres. "It is the first transparent sample of this material," emphasises Nishiyama.
It's no transparent aluminum, but it'll do.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 19 2017, @02:05PM (4 children)
It looks like mass-production would require a very large amount of power. It usually is the case where large technological leaps require or are driven by advances in power-production or concentration technology: horse, steam, hydraulic, electricity, et al.
Transparent aluminiu^W ceramics with nuclear power of some flavor, or stagnation (eventual collapse) with hippy-hugger wind/solar farms. Pick one.
(Score: 2) by fishybell on Sunday March 19 2017, @03:28PM
If you look at the sample the created, this is totally ready for prime time...for ants.
(Score: 4, Informative) by mhajicek on Sunday March 19 2017, @05:36PM
Transparent aluminum would be aluminum oxide, which is already in use for windows on armored vehicles.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by ledow on Monday March 20 2017, @08:37AM
I have no concept of the numbers, so I went looking for things using those kinds of pressures:
"The researchers noted that the material underwent a structural transition at 16 gigapascal (GPa)—near the pressure needed to commercially synthesize diamond—followed by a volume collapse at 30 GPa"
If 16GPa is already LESS than the pressure to synthesize diamond, and the temperature is about twice that of a kiln using for glass manufacturer anyway, it's not extraordinarily industrial a process compared to that which happens every day.
And, likely, if they commercialise it, the pressures will be increased and the temperature decreases (a kind Boyle's law for solids?) and temperature if the thing that costs to maintain. Enormous pressure can be applied by the right materials and a hand-crank, so it's likely not the big energy usage there.
And if we're talking about creating glass from ceramics, likely it will be no more energy-costing that either glass or ceramic, but able to do both jobs.
And let's not forget - likely the transport of raw and finished materials will wipe out manufacturing costs in such respects.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 20 2017, @02:56PM
the say at the end of the article they can currently make a window a maxim size of 5 mm
... so not usefull for actual house/car/plain windows atm